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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26884672">i prefer the wasteland, to be honest</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ianuarius/pseuds/Ianuarius'>Ianuarius</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Pining, Trans Male Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:01:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,387</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26884672</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ianuarius/pseuds/Ianuarius</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>blowing off quarantine anxiety by writing about my courier six. includes modded content.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Niner wakes with a start, but he doesn't know exactly what it is that's woken him until he hears Six whimper at his side. Crying?</p><p>"Six?"</p><p>He fumbles for his travelling partner in the dark, finds something that may be an arm or maybe a leg. Six flinches back from his touch and warbles like an injured molerat but he doesn't sit up like he would have if he were awake, no shift of hand going to holster for a gun or a knife.</p><p>Still asleep.</p><p>"Six."</p><p>He responds with another whimper, struggles against some invisible demon haunting him in his sleep, and with a gasp finally kicks off his blanket. Niner yelps and just barely dodges a booted foot, but none of this wakes Six who, now without anything to cover his shoulders from the cold night, curls into a ball on his sleeping roll and seems to finally settle.</p><p>That ain't gonna do, though. If they sleep in, then Six might get burned by the sun in the morning, if he doesn't freeze to death first. Nine tries to drape that blanket back over his companion's body and actually does get kicked this time for the trouble.</p><p>"Ow! Six!"</p><p>From start to finish, Niner's only been awake for maybe all of two minutes.</p><p>Maybe something's wired bad in Niner's head, but he always thinks clearest in times like this, half-asleep or drugged out of his skull.</p><p>Six doesn't like to be covered.</p><p>He doesn't talk about what happened, with the guy in the suit and the thing where he got shot in the head. Niner only knows the very basics, inluding the fact that apparently Six had to be dug up out of a shallow grave by one of them creepy Securitrons with a fakey cowboy accent. Usually he brushes off questions about it by saying the bullet scrambled his memories and he doesn't remember... but Niner guesses that ain't quite right.</p><p>If nothing else, his body must remember. The bullet didn't kill him, so that dirt was tossed on him while he was still alive, trying to breathe. If nobody had found him, then he'd have suffocated by sunrise.</p><p>"Hey, hey... Six. Wake up. Six!"</p><p>Six shoots upright in an instant as soon as Niner puts hands on him to shake him up, and he has half a second to pin Six's wrist to the mat before he can reach for a weapon. </p><p>"Niner, the fuck! It's not even light out, what are you yelling about--"</p><p>"I need you to put on my jacket, okay?"</p><p>It's not a blanket, but it's weatherproof and it'll keep Six warm in the night, keep the sun off his skin during the day. At least until they figure something else out--it's the only thing he can think to do. He can just have Six's discarded blanket and call it even, take it back in the morning and hand it back at night.</p><p>"Your jacket? Why?"</p><p>"Just do it, okay, I'll tell ya in the mornin'."</p><p>Too tired to argue, Six takes it from him without another word. Niner's got no intention of telling him the truth, obviously. He'll say he was hyped up on some chems or something, a little midnight treat or whatever. Six won't argue with that, will roll his eyes and mumble about what a pain in the ass he is and maybe something something Niner's jacket is gross.</p><p>When they've made the swap, Niner sneaking the blanket away from an exhausted Six and wrapping himself up tight, he finds he can't sleep.</p><p>He's never heard Six cry before.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Niner's not the settling type. At least, he thinks he's not.</p><p>Turns out, he's happy to settle on the Strip. The casinos, bars, and shops are all looking for security pretty much all the time, so there's no shortage or jobs or caps to go around. He gets an apartment on a side street with rickety little metal window boxes that he tries to use, can't, and instead fills with bright plastic flowers. There's money for food, and booze, and ocasionally a hit. On weekends he can gamble away what's left or socialize with some of the guys from work.</p><p>That's it, he thinks. He's settled.</p><p>Six spent a miserable couple of weeks at his side while he was trying to put his roots down in the intact streets, and then finally left without him.</p><p>Niner tried to get him to take the jacket. Six wouldn't have it.</p><p>People whisper 'courier, courier, courier' all the time and it pisses Niner off. They talk about him like he's a legend, or maybe a monster. They talk about him with too much greed, too much hope. Six is so strong, they say, he's so clever, they say, his silver tongue, they say...</p><p>But none of them know Six like Niner knows Six.</p><p>Six whose mouth tried to bend in a smile and then fiercly flattened so that he wouldn't give them away during their prank at the outpost. Six who, bruised and beaten, still reached out to give Niner a hand off the floor of that old motel room. Six who doesn't like booze or chems unless they're cigarettes and psycho, nothing else forevermore. Six who's able to chitter at geckos and bighorners the same way Niner can with dogs and coyotes. Six who can cook, barely, serving roasted maize and kebobs on tin plates with water or sasparilla and always shared his trail mix when Niner's body burned up all of the previous night's dinner on hammering his heart to get the jet out faster. Six who collected toys, even when the space in his backpack was better off saved for other things, only to give his finds out to any wasteland kids left wanting for rockets or dinosaurs or teddies.</p><p>Six who cried in his sleep, except when Niner traded his blankets out for a coat so Six wouldn't feel like he was being buried all over again.</p><p>It takes Niner months of grappling to realize a little too late that he is the settling type, but that it doesn't mean that it needs a where, if he already has a who.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I.</p><p>Being in the NCR's claws again, so close to the exact kind of situation that stole his brother, makes it hard to sleep. Niner relies on a few too many huffs of jet to get there, and when Six tries to shake him awake to tell him he's headed out on some bullshit errand, Niner turns his face into the flat pillow provided with the outpost bunk and goes back to sleep.</p><p>Six doesn't come back until the early hours of the next morning.</p><p>It's not an insignificant hike up to Nipton, but whatever happened up there has him near dizzy. He shares a couple of words with Seargant Kilborn, who's on guard duty, and then bypasses Niner entirely to do the same with the sniper lady on the roof. Both of them go sallow and grey at whatever it is Six has to tell them.</p><p>Then Six comes to find him, leads him around back near the picnic tables, and pukes. Niner would hold his hair if it was long enough to do so. It's not, so he runs his palm up Six's back and runs his fingers through his partner's deep brown roots, feels the patch near his temple where it was shaved for his surgery. A wail tries to break out of Six's throat, and then is cracked and smothered between Six's teeth so as to not bring any soldiers running to see what's happening. </p><p>"I'm fine," Six keeps saying, until the words choke him up with another wave of nausea.</p><p>Six doesn't sleep that night, and doesn't stop shaking for a long time. It's the first time he and Niner squeeze into a bed together.</p><p>Niner offers him steady, is rebuffed, and feels so stupid and helpless that he can't do more.</p><p>Six never tells him what happens and Niner doesn't feel comfortable asking. He pieces it together from whispers between the troops as the news inevitably spreads through the outpost, the burnt shape of Nipton in the distance as Six leads him around it insted of through, following the old railway tracks toward Novac. Six won't look at it, and he can't look at himself in the mirror of their motel room when they make it to town, either. He opens one of the drawers in the desk by the door, shoves a stack full of dirty old lottery tickets inside, and goes to bed soon after.</p><p>II.</p><p>Six slides out of bed. Niner's never going to understand why or how Six gets up just before the asscrack of dawn, even on days where they can actually sleep in on an acctual mattress.</p><p>"I'm gonna check out that signal I got on my Pip yesterday," Six tells him as he dresses, pulling their motel room apart as he gathers stims, bullets, makes sure his gun is in good shape.</p><p>"Need me to come along?"</p><p>Six snorts. "Not if you're gonna complain the whole time, which you would. You can stay here if you want."</p><p>"Sweet," Niner chuckles, rolling onto his stomach and stealing Six's pillow for himself. It smells like his hair, clean from having washed it in the night with some flowery pre-war shit he got from Briscoe in the dinosaur. "I'll do that then, and you can explore the nasty-ass whatever you find."</p><p>"Sure. I'll be back by noon."</p><p>But he's not. He's not back for days, weeks. Niner doesn't feel comfortable setting out without him, and he doesn't have the Pip to tell him where the signal Six heard is. He tries to look and doesn't find much, which leaves him to sit on his thumbs back in Novac hoping and praying that Six isn't dead and gone. He's not sure what he'd do if--</p><p>But he's not.</p><p>He comes back, like he always does, haunted and silent, one morning. Niner runs up to him and starts yelling, asking where the fuck he's been, and Six can't answer, can't look at him. He looks underfed and weak, keeps touching his neck to the point of being neurotic until he buys himself a brahmin-hide collar made for a herding dog off of a merchant who blows into town one day and out the next. He's carrying a strange weapon somewhere between an energy weapon and a gun, and as soon as he's well enough to drink again he makes Niner a funky-ass drink on the hot plate in their room, tries to cry and finds he's all dried up.</p><p>Of this, Niner knows even less. There's no whispers to guide him this time, and he doesn't know how to find the words to ask.</p><p>III.</p><p>"SIX!"</p><p>It's already too late. The weird light being projected from the satellite dissolves Six's shape in a flash until he's pixellated and gone. Niner only manages to scrape his palms and knees in the dirt, a second too late. He can't make himself get off the ground, can only punch the ground and curse it for not holding onto Six just a little bit better.</p><p>Rex whines and Arcade chews on his thumb until his teeth break through and it starts bleeding.</p><p>"It's fine," he says. "There's gotta be an explanation, it's just--"</p><p>But there's no explanation Niner cares to hear. The point is that Six is gone somewhere without Niner there to protect him, and that means he's likely to get hurt. He's going to see or hear or be forced to do something horrible and when he gets back there'll be shitall Niner can do for him. Science this and math that and reasonable probability whatever, it doesn't matter because Six is going to get hurt and the thought of letting that happen kills him.</p><p>And he's right, too.</p><p>The next time Niner sees Six is at the 188, Rex and Arcade long gone home, and he doesn't just look hurt. He looks broken.</p><p>"You can tell me. If you want," Niner stutters out, making space for Six on his bedroll that Six takes without a word. He doesn't tell Niner but he does bury his face in his chest against the rough kevlar of his vest. Niner strokes his clipped hair back from his forehead and finds the scar there, so thin that it's almost invisible, surgically thin and perfect as it traces the shape of Six's hairline and disappears under his the buzzed hair growing back around his ears like a halo.</p><p>The others come uncovered later, Niner looking away a little too late when Six changes his clothes or when the collar of his shirt sags to the side, flashing silvery and long down the length of his spine, its twin slicing down from between his collarbones and pooling under the bottom jut of his ribs like a teardrop.</p><p>Niner gets the sneaking suspicion that the scars aren't what's bothering Six the most. He'll catch Six staring into horizon on some days, won't respond to his name or even his NAME name, flinches a little too hard when Niner drags out the M on "mmmmkay." Others he'll be too stiff like a protectron or a roborain, a metallic undercut to his silverslick demeanor.</p><p>Niner wants to promise he'll never let Six go off ever again, knows it's a promise he'd be bound to break, and he's broken well enough promises to Six.</p><p>IV.</p><p>Niner makes a life for himself. It's the life his brother would have wanted for them to have.</p><p>It's a life that Six can't share.</p><p>Nothing could clip Six's wings, and homesickness draws him back into the shifting dunes of the red Mojave sand. Six leaves, and Niner stays, and when he does Niner hugs him tight and begs him to be safe.</p><p>"Out there?" Six laughs, almost normal and entirely beautiful. "Not a chance."</p><p>"Then don't fuckin' die on me, whatever you do."</p><p>Six scrapes thumbs across the faint stubble on Niner's cheeks and Niner can see the shape of his eyes under his shades, the white of his scars splitting his left eyebrow, could count every brown freckle on his nose.</p><p>"Haven't done before," Six says. "I'll be back and you won't even know what to do with me anymore."</p><p>Niner supposes that's true, and he fucking hopes to God that Six is wrong.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I have a disease where I never proofread my work so sorry in advance for any typos.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A few years back in a less (or more, depending on who you ask) familiar place, Micah Bishop changes the bag of RadAway on his younger brother's IV line. Luca still hasn't woken up, and by the time he does Micah will be long gone. James is gone. There's no more reason to stay here.</p><p>Luca turns his face, seeking the comparitive coolness of another body and Micah smooths a hand over his sweaty forehead. Some things never change.</p><p>Luca has, in a lot of ways.</p><p>He's grown into himself, his limbs and his cheeks. There's precious little left of the vault except for the faded, cracked leather jacket with a washed out serpentine design painted on the back. Otherwise, his brother could look like any wastelander, strong and sure-footed on the uneven ground of the ruins of the old world.</p><p>There's a lot of ways he hasn't, too.</p><p>Like diving into danger head-on, for one. There's miles of difference between putting himself in the firing line of Butch DeLoria's fist and letting himself die of radiation running on pure spite and little else... and yet it's the exact same boy, isn't it, angry for how little James paid any mind to him, scratching out any kind of attention he ever could, trying so desperately to prove to his old man that he wasn't a failure, not worth throwing away.</p><p>Then it's best of all, Micah thinks, that the biggest change of all is that there's no more James in him. He looks less and less like his father every day, more and more like his mother. He's got her delicate, tightly coiled hair and the brown of her skin. The sun shining outside of the vault has seen fit to give him freckles instead of the deep creases it gave James, something he likewise noticed in the picture James kept on his desk all this time. Micah never met her, only knows her through James' stories like his brother does.</p><p>She sounded incredible. Warm. Loving. A real go-getter, something who wasn't afraid of doing what was right, who wasn't afraid to do it herself if she had to.</p><p>Nothing like James.</p><p>What luck that Luca is so much like her. What a cruelty that he never got to be with her.</p><p>It's nothing short of an injustice that Luca will wake up alone, like he's done his whole life. Micah can't stay here any longer though, not without James. It's selfish and he knows it, but to stay here any longer would kill him, he thinks.</p><p>"There will come soft rains," he starts, and then stops. It doesn't feel like his place.</p><p>But there's nobody else. No Catherine, and no James either. Isn't that the point?</p><p>"There will come soft rains, and the smell of the ground,"</p><p>the ground denied to his brother, earth under boots, locked behind a facsimile of what it is to be alive, bolts and cogs and metal and he wonders if Luca cried when he first emerged from the Vault--</p><p>"and swallows circling with their shimmering sound,"</p><p>there's so much he wishes he could know about his brother--he knows Luca likes music if his friendship with Three Dog is anything to go by, but what kind is his favorite? does he dance, or sing, or hum to himself in the mornings?</p><p>"and frogs in the pools singing at night, and wild plum trees in tremulous white,"</p><p>has he taken to hunting? has he found a taste for the fruits of the wastes, that have learned to thrive on the radiation and filter it out of their blooms through their roots and stems? or does he still prefer what he grew up eating, pre-packaged staples from long before he was born?</p><p>"robins will wear their feathery fire, whistling their whims on a low fence-wire,"</p><p>he's brave, braver that Micah or James could have ever hoped to be. James used to keep the radio on and in the quiet between moments Micah would listen in, see what his brother was doing out there in the real world--</p><p>"and not one will know of the war, not one, will care at last when it is done,"</p><p>surely Luca knew he was bound to die, charging in like that, and why would he do that? Micah knows he's made friends out there, and Micah knows that Luca hates James for all he's done so why would he throw his life away like that, when James himself wasn't even here to see it happen--</p><p>"no one would mind, neither bird nor tree, if mankind perished utterly,"</p><p>he's too important, he's too precious, one-of-a-kind. Micah will never have another little brother, so--</p><p>"and Spring himself, when he woke at dawn, would scarcely know that I was gone."</p><p>Luca's eyes flutter in his sleep, likely dreaming. Micah wonders idly whether it's about the vault, or the wasteland, or his home in Megaton. he wonders if his mother visits him in his dreams, like an angel, or if James does, like a wraith. Micah knows that Luca won't be alone long, that Butch and the mercenary and the dog will all he clamoring by his bedside when he wakes up. People will have favors to ask him, people will greet him with beer when he walks into a bar, and there's a life worth living for him here.</p><p>Micah knows, somewhere in his heart (as unscientific as it is) that this is the last time he'll ever get to see his little brother.</p><p>He leaves two days later, hitchhikes across the wasteland, scratches out a living. He performs small acts of kindness and egregious wrongs, and one day Micah is shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave. When the body is dug out of the ground, still breathing, he's already long, long gone.</p>
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